From the Telegraph, March 4:
Chairman of the popular RIT Capital Partners investment trust warns savers of 'chaos, extremism and aggression' around the world, with 'horrendous' problems in Europe
Jacob Rothschild, the 78 year-old banker and chairman of RIT Capital Partners, has delivered savers in the £2.3bn trust a stark warning about global instability and the fragility of future returns.
He used his chairman's statement in the trust's 2014 annual report to outline his concerns, saying that on top of a "difficult economic background" investors face "a geopolitical situation perhaps as dangerous as any we have faced since World War II".
He said this was the result of "chaos and extremism in the Middle East, Russian aggression and expansion, and a weakened Europe threatened by horrendous unemployment, in no small measure caused by a failure to tackle structural reforms in many of the countries which form part of the European Union".
This was a much gloomier assessment of the world than the picture painted in his statement a year ago.
Then, he listed the major dangers as the slowdown in China's growth and a possible over-valuation of shares.
The trust was established in the Sixties with the aim of overseeing much of Jacob Rothschild's personal wealth.*As the Financial Times put it a couple years ago:
He and his daughter Hannah, who is also on the trust's board, together own shares worth approximately £160m.
RIT is popular among private investors thanks to its excellent track record and its conservative approach to conserving capital (see graph, below or click here for more charts)....MORE
Enduring lessons from the legend of Rothschild’s carrier pigeon
In 1815, the combined forces of Britain and Prussia defeated Napoleon’s army at the Battle of Waterloo. It was, said the Duke of Wellington, a damn close run thing. But even before the dust had settled on the battlefield, a carrier pigeon belonging to the House of Rothschild was on its way across the Channel to London. Nathan Rothschild, informed ahead of other traders that the country was not to be over-run by the French, consequently made a killing by buying British government bonds.Okay, scratch the pigeons, check the semaphores.
Little of this legend is true but there are elements that are accurate. There was a battle at Waterloo, which ended Napoleon’s career. Wellington did not say it was a damn close run thing but there is evidence he thought so. The Rothschilds used carrier pigeons but that was not how they learnt the battle’s outcome. Rothschild did have early knowledge of the outcome, and may have used it to advantage, but that knowledge was not the source of the house of Rothschild’s fabled wealth. It did, however, earn a great deal, helping governments of all complexions to fund the Napoleonic wars....MORE
